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What of the blind photographer?
The one who measures distance
by the warmth of the sun on her eyelids,
the one who hears the picture and snaps
that sound when you hear only silence,
the one who lists fourteen colors of the rain.

You imagine her cloaked and hooded
in a black cloth, a photographer from long ago
who grew images like lichen on glass and copper,
her fingers running over the plates
as if they spoke to her in Braille.

There are days when you blind yourself
with too much longing. Light is
tactile then. With its many hands
it washes the dullness
from your skin, touches all
that can’t be seen and makes it glow.

— from The Wild in You: Voices from the Forest and the Sea (Greystone Books, 2015)

I’m for truth, no matter who tells it. I’m for justice, no matter who it is for or against. I’m a human being, first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.”

Nox by Anne Carson. It’s for the dissertation. It’s not the first time I’ve read it. It’s interesting, and occasionally beautiful, but it’s long, and cumbersome, and my personal desire to not be working on this project right now is probably interfering with my ability to objectively evaluate any of the works I’m (supposed to be) writing about.

Watching…

The most recent seasons of Arrow, The Flash, and Legends of Tomorrow. At this point, Legends is the only one that I’m particularly interested in, but they are just interconnected enough that I feel obligated to keep watching the others. BUT I read an article about casting changes for the new seasons of a bunch of shows, and there are good things (as far as I’m concerned) happening for Arrow and Legends, so maybe those two will survive in the rotation of “things I watch.”

…it’s become a mantra for me and our family that, win or lose, it’s important to “get caught trying.” Whether you’re trying to win an election or pass a piece of legislation that will help millions of people, build a friendship or save a marriage, you’re never guaranteed success. But you are bound to try. Again and again and again.

There is such a place as fairyland – but only children can find the way to it. And they do not know that it is fairyland until they have grown so old that they forget the way. One bitter day, when they seek it and cannot find it, they realize what they have lost; and that is the tragedy of life. On that day the gates of Eden are shut behind them and the age of gold is over. Henceforth, they must dwell in the common light of common day. Only a few, who remain children at heart, can ever find that fair, lost path again; and blessed are they above mortals. They, and only they, can bring us tidings from that dear country where we once sojourned and from which we must evermore be exiles. The world calls them its singers and poets and artists and story-tellers; but they are just people who have never forgotten the way to fairyland.

Cork Dork by Bianca Bosker. On the polar opposite of Wine. All The Time., which I read just before this, this book makes me want to run away from the wine world screaming. I am FIRMLY on Marissa Ross’s side when it comes to approaches to wine (aka I want to feel relatively confident discussing, purchasing, and drinking wine). Becoming a sommelier sounds horrifying, though in a way where I suppose I kind of admire these people? Bosker’s writing is fresh and entertaining, so the book is a good read. It just also makes me want to scream fairly frequently.

Watching…

Jane the Virgin. Okay, technically I watched this. I’m caught up and stoked for the next season. It took me forever to get over the premise of this show (anyone who has grown up in a religious household where virgin birth is taught as a real possibility is probably going to at least be residually uncomfortable with the notion.) I’m glad my friends persisted in telling me how much they liked it, because I’m loving the modern telenovela structure, the narrator is hilarious, and the characters are loveable and weird.

Listening…

A lot of CBC Radio 2 this week. Which is never a bad choice in my book.

“Then I decided that this disorder and this dilemma, revealed by my desire to write on Photography, corresponded to a discomfort I had always suffered from: the uneasiness of being a subject torn between two languages, one expressive, the other critical; and at the heart of this critical language, between several discourses, those of sociology, of semiology, and of psychoanalysis — but that , by ultimate dissatisfaction with all of them, I was bearing witness to the only sure thing that was in me (however naïve it might be): a desperate resistance to any reductive system.”